rain dance
by Mashpotatoe Queen
Summary: Five times Aang took a friend rain dancing, one time they all took him, and all in all a lot of fluff and healing for everyone involved.


***WARNINGS***

**Mentions of harm to children, child abuse and abandonment, child soldiers, the airbender genocide, grief and the aftermath of growing up in a war.**

**...**

**1.**

"You've never gone dancing in the rain?"

Aang sounds incredulous. His eyes are wide with incomprehension and his clothes are sopping wet. Liquid traces rivulets down his bald head, and Katara wants to follow their paths but she is too busy staring _up. _

There is water falling from the sky.

Katara stares at it like it is a miracle, her eyes wide and her hands fidgeting, reaching out as if to touch before pulling them back towards her chest. Sokka, behind her, watches the wall of water with wary eyes, his own fingers curling for a weapon, for something to defend, because the unknown has always been dangerous and he does not trust what he does not understand.

All they have ever known is snow and hail, and this is something new to be added to the list. Their experiences are so vast and varied, and yet within just a few weeks they have learned of wonders they never before could have even imagined.

Rain is just another word to them. They add it next to trees, and flowers. Hard packed soil and crumbling mountains of stone. Animals of all sorts of shapes and sizes, berries and vegetables, rice and nuts, and all those flavors they have never tasted.

They do not know these words, they are not a part of their vocabulary. Not yet. But in time they will come to say them just as easily as iceberg and snowfall, penguin and bone.

_Rain, _Katara mouths, and it is wondrous.

She breathes, she breathes, and it is a miracle unto its own.

Aang takes her hand and pulls her out of the cave where they have set up camp. His smile is too big for his face and his eyes are alight with happiness, and he shows her how to splash in puddles and turn around fast enough her hair makes those little miraculous drops fly.

They catch the dripping water on their tongues, and it is not quite like catching snow but it reminds her of home.

* * *

**2.**

"No."

"But _Sok-ka... _"

Aang's eyes are purposely ridiculously wide, Sokka can tell. The kid has somehow mastered the kicked polar dog puppy look and made it an art form.

"But _A-ang-" _he mimics, running his whetting stone across the blade of his boomerang once more, putting all his concentration on the motion. If he doesn't face him, then the younger boy can't use his big eyes to convince him, simple as that.

"Sokka, Sokka, Sokka, Sokka, Sokka-"

Sokka narrows his eyes. He's not going to give in. He's a warrior of the Southern Water Tribe, he's a _man, _mature and wise and above such pettiness as _dancing- _

"Soooookkaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…."

He-

He's underestimated how much breath Aang can hold in his lungs.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

He's underestimated just how _annoying _Aang could be.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

_Oh, Great Moon Spirit above and all things sacred- _

_"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-" _

_"_Fine!"

Aang immediately cuts himself off, perking up brilliantly and sending Sokka a full blast of sunshine smile, hardly waiting a second to shoot to his feet. Milliseconds later he's tugging at Sokka's hands and tapping on the older boy's shoulder, letting the occasional "Come on!" and "Hurry up!" burst out of his mouth. Sokka just slowly packs up his things, grumbling all the while, and steps out of their leafy shelter into the pouring rain outside.

There were several Fire Nation colonies all along their current root, and thus it was decided that their upcoming restocking trip at whatever market they could find should be handled as unobtrusively as possible. Which meant, of course, that Aang probably shouldn't be a part of it.

And, concurrently, that someone should really stay behind and keep an eye on him, because the last time they left him alone there was a whole frankly _insane _series of events that involved three egg custard tarts, fifteen boar-Q-pines, and several mistaken identities spanning across four separate towns.

Sokka _still _doesn't know how Aang pulled it off. In all honesty, it's probably for the best.

Either way, the end result means that someone has to be on Aang-watching duty- and that this time it was him who drew the unlucky hand.

To be fair, though, Katara had willingly stayed behind the last four times, and was getting a little antsy about it.

And so there Sokka was, accepting his fate, standing in the pouring rain and already soaked to the bone.

"This is stupid," he says, looking at the clouded sky.

Aang just grins, spinning around and around with hands above his head, catching raindrops, laughing, calling over his shoulder, "Are you kidding me? This is _magical!" _

And listen, listen, Sokka is more of a facts and science guy than anything. He could talk for hours about the water cycle, about clouds and evaporation and how it all works. He's logical, quick on his feet and _smart, _and he's never held much stock in the concept of magic.

He opens his mouth to protest.

Stops.

Breathes.

Because really, really, if he looks at it, really looks at it, he can almost understand what Aang is saying. There is water falling from the sky, warm and singing on his skin. Aang is still laughing, still spinning, and droplets splatter across the earth in all directions like he was bending it, but he's not, he's not, he's just _dancing. _It's strange and foreign and distant. It's frankly ridiculous. And still, still, _still, _it is it's own kind of magical.

Some small traitorous part of him thrums with excitement, the part he's buried deep down with the sight of his mother's burned body lying on the ground and the crushing isolation that is being left alone on a pier with far too much responsibility on his shoulders and not enough strength to make it through as an optimist, as a person built on conceptual faith that everything will turn out alright.

Sokka takes what's given to him, builds himself up on what he can create and mold, lays foundations in facts and statistics and everything solidly real. He becomes a cynic, but only because the world has never given him any reason to believe in anything otherwise.

He takes what's given to him, and he breathes and he _lives. _

But Aang is still spinning, still laughing, flying without his feet leaving the ground, and that small traitorous part of him deep inside whispers _Just because it's magic doesn't mean it's not real. _

And Sokka hesitates, hesitates, and then finally tilts his head back and starts to spin, droplets soaking him to the bone and making itself home, warm and thrumming and real. It's something like faith, something like hope. It bubbles up inside of him, rushing, alive.

Aang is laughing, laughing, and when he reaches out to grab the older boy's hands to start spinning around in circles together, Sokka does not protest. He just laughs with him, and dances in the rain.

* * *

**3.**

"Are you… _dancing _?"

Vibrations loud in the thunderous sound, a thousand pricks of sensation flaring to life in her chest and vanishing into nothing just like that, the splatter of raindrops playing with her senses and making things more vague and indistinct.

Toph doesn't like the rain, much.

But even with all the strange wavering distortions all around her, throwing her rhythm off and making the world seemingly shake without movement or sound, she could find Aang. It was almost instinctual now, finding their little gang in the vibrations: Sokka's erratic steady stride, Katara's soft flowing footsteps, Momo's skittish landings, Appa's heavy footfalls, and the brush of Aang's feet on the ground, barely even there, like a soft breeze tickling your skin before whipping away.

Aang turns to look at her, feet sliding in wet mud and slipping, never off balance but perhaps something near graceless. She had asked, because that's certainly what it _felt _like he was doing, and the very thought made her feel incredulous. She had asked, because his ridiculous twinkle toes amidst all this rain made him more of a rapidly moving blur than any distinct shape or form.

The whole earth is shaking with vibrations, filling up with them, moving around with them. They are in the middle of nowhere and the rain is still falling down.

The world's not blank. Of course it's not. If she couldn't focus past random vibrations she wouldn't be able to do much of anything with her earthbending sight, much less fight. There are always vibrations, ants scrambling and wheels of wagons rolling and animals thumping and people jumping and _everything everything everything- _

But even that is little in comparison to this, so very different from the gentle showers of her old home, of individual drops splattering everywhere. This is hard and fast and without stopping, and she does not get to pick and choose what she senses and what she ignores.

So Aang is out there, blurred all along his every edge, and she is watching him from inside her small oasis of clarity, an old abandoned stone barn they're camping out in, where the vibrations shake the tin roof but do not shake her foundations, and it is enough.

He's grinning, this ridiculous boy she's starting to call friend. There are some things you don't need eyes to see to understand. There are somethings you just _know: _Aang is grinning, and he is dancing, and the rain is still falling down.

"Yeah?" Aang yells, and his smile is clear to her, hiding in his voice, "Are you _not?" _

Toph looks down at her feet firmly planted on the tiled floor, and raises an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"I'm not even going to acknowledge that with a response."

Aang just laughs. "Fair enough!"

And then -

"Do you _want _to come dance?"

Toph immediately bristles. It's one thing to feel the indistinct world from outside of it, and quite another to push herself into it, to let go of her steady ground and trade it for the unknown.

"Toph?"

Questioning. Unsure. Toph bites the inside of her cheek and feels sourness sinking in her stomach.

She shakes her head, turns back into the barn, pauses, _freezes _. The structure is big, old stone and high ceiling, and once upon a time it must have belonged to someone very rich.

The structure is big, and empty. Katara and Sokka are long gone for a scouting trip around their area before they officially set up camp. Toph doubts they'll find anything, they're miles away from any villages, isolated from the rest of the world and-

And then she grows angry.

She is so, so tired of being alone. Of being isolated. Of big empty houses and old silent stone. It's what is known but she did not run away to find things she already knew, for shelter and warm comforts, for _rules. _She ran away for an adventure. For something new. She ran away because for the first time in her life someone looked at her and didn't even hesitate to trust her, to believe that she knows what she's doing and is _good _at it. She ran away because Aang still smiles at her just as brightly as he did for anyone else, even if she couldn't 'see' it.

Adventure doesn't sweep you away to something you already know. Adventure is when you pick up the bravery to step out your front door and go wherever the wind takes you. When you step out your front door and ignore the old trodden paths in favour of fresh green ones. When you take risks, and take chances, and let go of foundations to build new ones.

Toph so desperately wanted to escape her old home and it's quiet halls. It bothers her that the minute she finds herself uncertain she latches back onto it, to that sense of security, that sense of _boredom _she so despised, because at least she knows its exact dimensions.

It bothers her, and so she does exactly as she always has when facing a problem: she faces it head on.

She breathes. There are some things you do not need eyes to see. Some things you do not need to see to understand. There are some things you just _know. _

The rain is still falling down.

She turns back around and faces that wide unknown world outside, knows that Aang is dancing still, that small animals are buried in their dens, that the earth is a cacophony of vibrations and she is about to step into it.

And then she does just that, marches stubbornly forward and into the outside world, to the thousands upon millions upon billions of rain drops piercing the earth from above, feels the way the water clings to her hair and soaks her skin.

Spotting her, Aang waves hugely, gestures her over with flying limbs that Toph tries to keep track of through all the vibrations. She takes one step, and then another, stamps down _hard _in the mud each time, trying to grasp her bearings, trying not to trip-

But Aang grows impatient far too quickly, and is suddenly _there, _right beside her, grabbing at her hand and tugging her along, talking a mile a minute with his smile still hiding in his voice.

Toph swallows down on her urge to lash out, to build a massive stone dome and hide from all her blurred edges. She swallows down how much she hates this feeling, this uncertainty, this sensation that others might see her as being helpless.

She is not helpless. She's _not. _And these are not people she needs to convince of this truth. _Aang _is not a person she needs to convince of this truth.

So she swallows the feeling down and lets Aang tug her along. Asks, the words cracking on her tongue, "So how do we do this, Twinkle Toes?"

Her response is a ball of sopping muddy water to the face.

She blinks, once, twice, takes in the sound of Aang laughing, the vibrations of a world not silent all around them, and feels her own lips pulling into a grin.

Swooping down, feet firmly planted in the massive puddle of watered down mud, she scoops up a massive spray of water into the air, laughing when she hears Aang choke on it, scrambling away when she feels the sturdier way he's planting his feet, the sensation of his hands slipping into the murk below.

It dissolves into chaos.

It's more like wrestling than dancing, really, bare feet slopping in pools of muddy water, chasing each other down all around the abandoned barn, hands dipping into puddles and splashing at respective opponents with great swoops of liquid.

They use their bending, sometimes. But for the most part it's just them, two kids playing out in the rain, running and laughing and breathless, more mud than skin and more joy than sorrow.

It's just them, twisting and turning and ducking, coming together and falling part, and perhaps if you did closely you could see something like choreography tucked away there, hidden in plain sight, hidden in the lights dancing in their eyes.

Toph breathes.

The world is not quiet here, it is not hers.

There is a cacophony of sound. The way that Aang is laughing and their feet pounding and splashing on wet earth. The rain splattering on their heads and filling the ground with its rushing vibrations come every single drop. The wind whistling through the old tin roof and her own heartbeat drumming steadily in her chest.

She listens to these things, makes use of them to mark her aim of mudballs, to duck away from Aang's fast paced returns when she can. This is not a battle, not a war, and if her projectiles go flying in the wrong direction there is no one there who will judge.

She breathes, she laughs. The world is not quiet here, it is not hers.

But she never wanted it to be.

She is tired of the old and silent, of those trodden down paths she has already walked. She yearns for this, an adventure in the making, a life about to start, a thousand things she has never done and people besides her to start doing them with.

The world is not quiet here, and it _is not hers _, but Toph breathes and breathes and breathes, and it is more than enough.

There are some things you do not need eyes to see. Some things you do not need to see to understand. There are some things you just know.

The rain is still falling down, and this trust in her chest cannot be gripped in her small calloused palms, this friendship is not hers to hold, but either way she knows they are there.

Aang laughs, calls her over, and she can hardly sense his light feet through all the dancing rain. But she trods forward anyways, one foot after another, and trusts that he will call again should she become misled.

She has known every step she has ever taken in her long short life. For once, it will be nice to try walking blind.

* * *

**4.**

Suki watches him.

Quietly, unobtrusively, when she knows he is not looking. The avatar with his changing eyes and growing bones, the avatar and his brilliant blue tattoos, the avatar and the force of nature he holds inside his chest, _the avatar- _

The avatar, who is just a child.

The avatar, who is just a _boy. _

Suki watches him.

She watches as he trains in wading rivers and rock strewn crevices. Watches as he laughs, and smiles, and sings and plays. Watches as he laughs at silly jokes and sneezes himself up fifteen feet into the air.

There's this- _life _to him, and she cannot explain, and Suki is a warrior not a scholar but she has heard stories all her life about the avatar, about how powerful they are, how incredible, how they are going to save them…

She has heard these stories all her life, and she has believed them, and now she looks at Aang and he is no older than any of the children in her village, younger than her and cheeks still round with baby fat and-

And-

And a part of her is so angry because she wanted to be saved, to have no reason to fight anymore. A part of her is angry because all those stories raised her expectations so high, created a martyr and a savior and a saint, and instead all she gets is this snot nosed kid-

But everything else in her is just so _sad. _

Suki watches him. Watches _Aang. _Watches him laugh and grin and bounce, play with Momo and snuggle with Appa, pull pranks and tell stories, greet each sunrise with enthusiasm just because it's there to be met.

And late at night she keeps her eyes tight shut and her body lax, even as she listens to him shake himself apart, listens to Sokka's sleep-rumpled voice soothe him and quieten his sobs, listens to him breathe hollow until morning.

She watches, she listens, thinks, _just a child, just a boy, _and aches with it.

She breathes.

There was a time, she thinks, when she was younger, she would have been jealous. Jealous of how trusted he was, so much responsibility on such slim shoulders. She has spent every day of her life carving leadership in her bones and what would it be like, she thinks, to just be expected to lead without having to make a claim first?

There was a time.

Now she is older, and far more scarred and travelled, and there is a softness in her chest that she once tried so hard to keep sharpened ste. Now she is older, and still too young- _they are all too young- _and she looks at this boy and can only see someone who needs every protection she can spare, including from her own expectations.

And so, when the rain starts falling down, and he is suddenly before her, asking to dance, she does not judge, she rises.

The rain comes falling down all around them, and she rises.

"How do you want to do this?" she calls over the wind, but Aang just smiles, just laughs, grins.

"You're thinking too hard!"

Bare feet splash into a puddle, and Aang dances like a falling leaf, spinning and wild and graceful still.

The stories say that when the Avatar dances, the elements dance in time with their rhythim. But the stories say a lot of things.

Suki watches, she listens, and she does not think that Aang is bending anything to his will. She thinks that he is just joining in on nature's chaotic choreography, somehow knowing every step without ever being told. The raindrops splatter around him in arches, and he spins and dips and leaps with them, harmony is disjointed motions.

Suki watches, she listens, and when Aang gestures for her to join in, she dances.

* * *

**5.**

Zuko resists the urge to bang his head against the wall, pushes down the angry flickering flames trying to crawl out of his chest, and breathes deeply.

Control. He is in control.

And then, making sure his voice is quiet and leveled, he raises his voice.

"Aang," he asks, "what are you doing?"

Aang, from where he's _supposed _to be practicing his basic firebending runs and is most decidedly _not, _looks up at him from…. whatever the hell he was doing.

"Dancing!" the kids calls, grinning excitedly, moving his body every which way in something that is wild and incredibly strange.

Zuko blinks, because he _knows _dancing, had been drilled in the incredibly formal back and forth swaying growing up in case of any important parties and such. Whatever Aang is doing….

"That's _not _dancing."

And then Aang freezes.

Zuko mentally panics for a second, or maybe three, because what if he just messed up again and ruined this whole endeavor of training the avatar before it could really begin? Or worse, what if he hurt Aang's feelings? Katara would literally skin him alive-

But then Aang turns on him, slowly, and his eyes are wide.

"Zuko. Do you not know what dancing is?"

He rolls his eyes.

"Yes, I know what dancing is. Do _you _not know what "go through your firebending steps until I come back" means?"

But Aang is not deterred.

"Show me! C'mon, show me."

Aang is watching him with an anticipatory gaze, and Zuko can just _tell _that the kids is not going to let this go.

So he sighs, and shifts, and raises his hands for an imaginary partner, sways once one way and then the other, and then lowers them to look dead pan at Aang.

"Can we get back to work now?"

But the younger boy is just looking at him in some sort of abstract horror.

"Zuko," he says, "I didn't even _think- _You've never… oh, spirits…"

Zuko folds his arms across his chest.

"What?"

Grey eyes become steel and glint with humour at the same time. There's something mischievous in Aang's gaze, something determined, and Zuko knows that look all too well, knows there's no hope of escape.

"I," says Aang, all too serious, "am going to teach you how to dance for _real." _

Zuko opens his mouth. Closes it. The avatar is insane and the world is doomed. He opens his mouth, and again all that comes out is-

_"...What?" _

The kid ignores him.

"Okay, so the first thing you gotta know about dancing, is that it's free! It's all about you and the rhythm and the music-

"Aang-"

"Of course there's traditional dances and stuff but even those dances are ones you choose to do and they still connect with the spirit inside of you and-"

_"Aang-" _

"For example, there's the Camelephant Strut, which goes like-"

_"AANG!" _

"Yes?"

The kid is grinning at him, still, even though he just yelled. And not the way Azula grins either, with a turn of her lips sharper than any blade. Aang's smile is just that, a smile, open and welcoming and excited, no ulterior messages needed. Aang's eyes are soft and warm and not at all scared.

Zuko wonders when being unafraid became the norm, not the exception. He wonders when kids like Aang became the exception, not the norm.

He wonders, and it tastes bitter on his tongue, all these children raised by a war not a life.

Shadowed eyes and haunted faces, smiles that stretch too thin across hidden messages beneath. None of this is fair and he's still breathing.

He's _still breathing. _

Core too tight in his chest and that throbbing flame of life still pounding in time with his heart, and he looks at Aang and thinks of all the things he'll never know tucked away in the boys smile, a child raised by a life and not a war, a child with these scars not burned into his flesh and bone.

_Breathe, _he thinks, and he does.

The rain is falling so lightly it's hardly even there, a fine mist that gets caught on his eyelashes and leaves goosebumps on his arms.

Aang twists and loops with a freedom Zuko has never known, and the boy's back is still bloodied and open by an ugly healing wound, and none of this is fair but they're both still breathing.

He doesn't understand the light in this boy's eyes, a brightness not caught by any flickering flames. He does not understand, and it makes him want to last out, makes him want to-

"This is stupid," he says, because it is, but Aang just laughs.

"Sokka said the same thing!"

"This is _really _stupid."

"Aww, c'mon, Zuko! I'll teach you, it'll be fun!"

Aang looks at him, grinning, open. Zuko has gone through a thousand wars in his long short life, fighting for his right to exist in a world so intent on breaking him, and he has done it almost always on his own.

There have been others, of course, who have reached their hands out to help. His mom, Mai, his _uncle- _

But perhaps for the first time, when he sees that hand reaching out to him, he finds himself reaching back.

He's turning a new leaf, he's finding little silver linings, carving these scars so that they are his own. There is a lifetime of battles under his chest and he is breathing still, and this is not for nothing.

_Let me teach you, let me show you, let me help you- _

Zuko breathes, and he is made of hairline fractures of hesitance, and Aang's small pale hand is still waiting for him.

He swallows, blinks, tenses and releases, flicks away water droplets gathering in his hair.

Silver linings and new leaves, scars carved into his chest all to his own. And still breathing, still breathing-

"Okay," he says, almost too quiet, but it's a choice he made all on his own, and it's not nothing.

Aang grins like he's just harnessed the sun and it makes something soft sound in Zuko's mind, something like nostalgia and something like longing, and he's still breathing.

And they dance.

Zuko's too stiff and too contained, hardly daring to move while Aang flits around like a butterfly. It feels weird to be moving like this, disjointed and without purpose. It feels almost wrong.

But Aang is laughing, loud, happy, and the raindrops reflect the sunshine from above, reflect it in a thousand ways and a thousand colours, and it feels almost wrong but it's not, it's _not- _

The rain is trickling down all around them, flashing, wondrous, and they dance.

The rain is trickling down all around them, and Zuko is still breathing.

And this is not nothing.

* * *

**+1**

Aang pets Appa's snout, back and forth, back and forth. The great high seated roof rings with every drop of the pouring rain.

He's been busy. They've all been busy. The world is still pulling itself together and they're stretched in a thousand directions, trying to make the puzzle pieces fit one by one by one.

But not today.

His shoulders feel heavy and his eyes feel wet, and the thick smell of hay reminds him of the old airbending stables.

It should. The whole place is designed to look like those old open air caverns, ancient architecture smack dab in the middle of the shiny new Fire Nation palace. They had made a day out of it, a kindness for a bison who carried them around the world, somewhere soft and gentle where he could rest with utmost comfort.

At the time, it had made him smile. His friends all together, pouring over plans and putting the place together, stylizing it, living in it, making it a tribute and a memoir to people gone. It warmed his heart, and Appa's gleeful bounds as he explored the place made him laugh.

But now, all it's doing is making him feel homesick and sad.

These pillars may look like the ones of his old home, but they were stomped into place with a bout of earthbending. This hay was grown in Fire Nation soil. The water troughs of Sokka's design.

It may look like it was made by the Air Nomads. It may even feel like it. But it's not, it's not, _it's not. _

One hundred and one years is a very long time.

There is a belief among airbenders that, when you breathe, you give and take little pieces of yourself to the world around you. Everyone is connected, breathing in the same air, sharing it, filling it up with themselves and taking in every breath all the others release.

Sometimes, when Aang closes his eyes and breathes deep, he almost feels like everything is alright. He can imagine that he is back at the Southern Air Temple, hanging out with Gyatso, or otherwise visiting Bumi or Kuzon. He can imagine that there had been no war, no battles to fight, no evil to conquer. He can imagine that he is safe, that there is no responsibility weighing down on his small thin shoulders, that there is no reason to hide, to run, to fight or to fear.

Sometimes.

Because even then, closing his eyes comes with opening them again, and facing the world around him. A blink only lasts a moment of a lifetime, and Aang can see years and years and years ahead of him, always weighed down by the world and its problems, always struggling to keep his head above the water.

He breathes deep, and he wonders when the last time he shared air with another airbender. Was it sometime when he was sleeping beneath the waves? Did he take a breath then, and when he released it was he alone?

He does not know. And one hundred and one years is such a very long time.

Appa croons, low and long and sad. Aang curls his finger in soft fur and shares air with a friend who came with him from a lifetime ago. Gives and takes little pieces deep inside his chest, that broken shattered thing that is his peoples and his culture and his once known home.

_Was it fast? _he wonders, _was it quick? _

He thinks of bodies strewn on sacred ground, of nurseries crowded and burning, of Gyatso fending off monsters, (_ soldiers, people still _) all on his own.

_Did it hurt? _he thinks, and he does not know.

How many hours was he gone before the fires rained down from the heavens? If he had stayed another day, another hour, could he have saved them?

How many men, women, children are dead because of his doomed venture? How many did he know? How many has he already forgot?

_Could he have saved them? _

He does not know, he does not know, and no one has any answers.

Aang breathes out bits and pieces of his shattered chest, and breathes in no healing.

Appa rumbles his great core, nudges him close and soft and warm. Aang hides his face in his fur and does not feel ashamed of his tears.

Air fills his lungs, releases into the winds, and Aang thinks _take it, take it: _this mourning, this scarred ache, this numb cold of a hundred years trapped and thousands of lives gone.

_ Take it all- _

Suddenly, a hand on his shoulder. Light and present and here. Aang lifts his face, tries for a smile, falls flat.

"Hey, Katara."

She smiles back, soft and warm, far too knowing and far, far too kind. Her eyes reflect wonders for all the mundane miracles of a world gone mad. Those small fragile things so simple and grand, hope and kindness and the fact that they are living still, growing still.

Behind her is the rest of them, this mix and match family he found all on his own, and they are all still breathing.

Sokka coughs, grins, reaches out to grab at his palm, long fingers swallowing his own small ones.

"It's raining," the older boy says, too soft and too hard, the words all cracking on the jagged edges of his heart. Aang breathes them in anyways, and it aches.

Sokka's hands are more the hands of a man than a child. He's grown, in this past year. They all have. They are all growing up, growing old.

One hundred and one years.

(_How many, how many, how many-) _

_(How many never got the chance?) _

"C'mon, Twinkle Toes, let's go dancing."

Toph reaches out to him, confident and sure. How many foundations has he built on her steady strength? This girl who was so alone and so stubborn and so determined to find her own way, who was brave enough to reach out and try something new despite it all, who planted firm roots and grew tall and magnificent and strong.

He has always been a hair's breadth away from vanishing into the winds. He has always been lost and scared and changing. But she reaches out her hand and asks, angry and scarred and trusting still, and what can Aang say to that?

"Could be fun," says Suki, watching serene and too understanding for her own good. This is a woman who grew into a role she carved out for herself, who lived and learned and grew with every steady stride. Who was impassioned with a cause of justice and hardened to a world that just kept fighting, who learned to soften and protect and remember why such justice and battles were fought for.

"Aang," Zuko calls, and just that, so soft, a flickering candle in the dark. The sunlight makes his scar look waxen. His face speaks of youth. There are calluses on his knuckles where he once held swords and now callouses from holding quills. He is too rigid at all his edges but he has long since learned to bend and not break, to find his own freedom with every passing moment.

He sounds tired. He sounds old. He sounds grown and growing still.

Grown and growing still, that is all they are, every last one of them.

Aang breathes. The rain falls down above their sheltered heads in great sheets. He listens to it pour.

One hundred and one years of missed opportunities, never growing up and never growing old, never even getting the chance. One hundred and one years of missing the rain, of not dancing in it.

Appa snuffles at the back of his robes, huffs and hums low. This great big beast who stuck with him through the end of the world, and who stuck with him before that, too. Aang is not the last airbender while he is still around, and bisons live entire lifetimes.

Aang breathes out, drags the shattered discards of his soul from his chest and lets them spill down his front and seep into the earth. Let them grow there, then, or let them rot. He will not be poisoned.

He lets his ragged edges fall away and he keeps all that love tucked close to his heart. A thousand souls lost to ash and fire, but he is still breathing, so the monsters did not win.

Aang breathes out, and he lets the pain flow.

And then he inhales, slowly, shakily. Grief is not so simple as breathing, and breathing is not so simple.

Breathing, breathing. Aang inhales, and he traces all those tiny connections he has built within himself to all these people here and now. He does not know when he last shared air with an airbender, but his family here is grown and growing still, living still, _breathing _still, and this is not nothing.

Aang breathes in, fills himself up with their friendship, their trust, their strength, their hopes, their soft words and understandings. He fills himself up with all the truths hidden in their eyes, breathes it in like an antidote, plants the fickle things in his heart and hopes it will grow.

_You are not alone. You are loved. You are still here. You are still breathing. _

_(We are breathing with you.) _

Raindrops shatter outside. His tears slip down to join them.

"Okay," he says, and just that.

They walk outside, all of them, his mix matched family of blood traitors and runaways, vagabonds and heroes, kindnesses and mercies and miracles all wrapped up into growing beings of scars and skin and bone.

The rain pours. Aang is one hundred and fourteen years old. It is such a long time.

And he's still breathing.

All these shattered teardrops. He wonders if the spirits mourn, if they ache deep in their chests. He wonders if the rain has come to drown out the poison. He wonders if its just rain.

Aang dances.

His family joins him, quietly and solidly and here. He found them all on his own, but they were the ones who chose to stay. Four different nations dancing on soil made of ash, together and healing and breathing still. There are deep-rooted scars hidden under their skins. There are miracles, too.

Aang dances.

He dances because he knows of so many who never even got the chance. He dances because he is still breathing, because he wants to, because it is fun.

He dances so that the monsters will not win: greed, war, violence, fear, hunger for power. These monsters hide under people's skins. They've killed more than just airbenders.

Aang dances.

He dances because the earth is soft and wet under his bare feet, and it makes him feel steady. Because he can feel the vibrations in the air and it reminds him to keep breathing. Because there's a warmth in his chest that burns like a fire, a beacon in the dark for lost souls trying to find home. He dances because the water pours down from the heavens and it compels him too, gently and stubbornly and kind.

Aang dances.

He dances because he is just a child, just a boy. He still grins too big for his face and laughs at any presented joke. He is too kind, too caring, too loving for this world gone mad. He grew up with a childhood of peace in his bones, not a war etched into his every facet of living.

He dances because he often is quite happy, because these weights are heavy but he does not have it in him to be grounded for long. Sitting still is not in his nature and he is of the insistent belief that miracles hide in plain sight, mundane and beautiful and unseen until you revel in them.

He dances because he wants to, because it brings him joy, because it is childish and fun. Because he is perhaps the only one in the group who recognizes how truly young they all are, that they are all just children trying to survive in a world gone mad, that it wasn't always like this, that they did not deserve this, that it wasn't _fair- _

(He knows all too well that they all deserve to be children, sometimes.)

He dances because he has a gentle spirit in his chest and the war has not hardened it. He dances because this is a strength, not a weakness.

So Aang dances.

By the time he's done, he's breathing hard. Behind him, his found family is breathing harder. They have been dancing for a long time.

But one hundred and one years is a long time to make up for.

He lifts his face and looks up at the sky of clearing clouds, swirling greys giving way to deep blues. The rain is still trickling down, softer now, quiet.

He inhales and exhales in connections, and his family gathers close. He breathes, breathes, wonders in the fact that even if they are all gone, the air once breathed by his people so many years ago still exists to be shared.

One hundred and one years is such a long time. But he's got time, still.

Aang closes his eyes, facing the sky.

The rain washes his tear tracks clean.

**...**

**Hope you enjoyed. **


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